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October 2010

October 29, 2010

I was originally drawn to this unassuming website because of the mesmerizing animated gifs, but after my initial perusing I was pleasantly surprised to find some weird videos as well. I particularly enjoyed the strangeness that was going on in this 'War_bells' video.

Can't say much for the song but aside from that the grey monster and his magic machine made for a peculiar (great) watch.

The video can be found on vimeo here amongst some other cool vids. Or on Brandon Blomaert's site here.

Whilst derided by many as drab and 'mumsy', I personally am loving the camel revolution... Not a single fashion magazine has even hinted at eschewing this winter's It shade, instead embracing it's delicious not quite caramel hue on everything from classic woolen coats to super soft blonde leathers, shifts, shorts... Look as hard as you wish - there's no escaping camel this winter.

And good stuff too - worn with the right cut, camel can look classy, smart and a perfect statement in itself, or a brilliant canvas for any outfit. And let's face it, we've seen it many times before and no doubt will again; a camel coat is a timeless classic, bound to come back season after season. Even if in Winter 2011 the fashionistas decide that camel is past its best, pop a mothball in the pocket, tuck it at the back of your wardrobe and then smile smugly when, in a couple of years, you're ahead of the rest.

October 28, 2010

For anyone who saw and enjoyed the fantastic BBC series ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ presented by the brilliant Professor Brian Cox I would highly recommend the book of the series which landed on my door step just a few days ago. I’m only a little way into the book but already it’s proving to be a visual treat!

Not surprisingly, the content is fascinating, but alongside this sits some stunning photography (albeit a few too many of the Professor himself) and lots of rather lovely info-graphics. With such a mind-blowing topic, the charts and diagrams do a really good job of presenting fairly complex and incomprehensible information in an intelligent yet understandable manner.

October 26, 2010

On Saturday we gain an extra hours sleep. We’re currently on British Summer Time but at the weekend we change our clocks by 1 hour to adhere to Greenwich Mean Time. But why?

The tradition of putting back the clocks for 1 hour each October has been going on for years. But what are the benefits? Extra sunlight in a morning – when most of us are in bed!

I personally think there are more negatives about doing this. Who wants to drive to work in the dark and then drive home in the dark? Rush hour traffic is a nightmare at the best of times so why add darkness to make it even more horrendous. Statistics show that motor accidents rise substantially when driving in the dark – three times higher at night than during the day!

And what about morale? I know I like sunlight. It makes me feel better and more active. A survey in 2005 suggested that admitting sunlight into hospital wards increases morale and the recovery of patients, never mind providing the human body with an important source of vitamin D.

There has been a lot of discussion and debate over the last few years about ‘Double Summer Time’ – putting clocks two hours forward in the summer months and one in the winder months. This would provide extra daylight hours at the end of the day and boost tourism for some, but provide darker morning in the North. The Scottish Government made the statement ‘Plunging Dundee into darkness to boost tourism in Torquay is simply not acceptable’. So the debate continues.

October 25, 2010

How can you be a fan of Bill Hicks and still do the job we do? I guess it depends on how you look at things (he definitely would not approve of that comment). There isn’t a day goes by that he doesn’t sit on my shoulder like a little goat-boy reminding me not to become one of satan’s little helpers.

This year, art house cinemas across the UK had very limited screenings of ‘American - The Bill Hicks story’. My local, The Hyde Park Picture House had it for only one Thursday night about a month ago and I’m ashamed to say, I missed it. The good news is that it’s now out on DVD although it’s admittedly a bit pricey at £16.99. Worth every penny though - it’s not the usual biopic.

I watched the Serge Gainsbourg biopic recently and, in its attempt to be unconventional, turned out to be pretty boring. ‘American’ is a different story - literally. Both films are about mavericks and for some - national heroes, but ‘American’ manages to capture the spirit of the man almost entirely, leaving you to want to go out and discover, or rediscover his work immediately. The Gainsbourg movie actually feels like it’s a bit more than the sum of his work and, having subsequently done my homework, his work doesn’t seem to live up to the legend.

‘American’ has an interesting style, using stills animation which we’ve all seen but never to this degree. It’s odd but it really works. However, the stand-ups are really what Bill Hicks was about and they are absolutely unbeatable. So many times since his untimely death I’ve longed to know what he’d have to say - 9/11, Bush, Bill Gates, Facebook?

Like many great Americans he was accepted in the UK long before he was recognised in the States, and in many places he still isn’t. For me though, he helps to keep me on track and occasionally, gets me into a heap of trouble when his spirit whispers in my ear ‘maybe this is the moment you should be telling people what you really think’.

So, because it’s halloween - long live the ghost of Bill Hicks. May he continue to scare us into doing the right thing.

You can watch what he had to say about marketing and advertising here. Ignore it at your peril.

This is a super-late blog post but I do have an excuse. Lame as it may seem, I just didn’t know where to start and, given that the title of the lecture series is ‘Do’, it’s about the feeblest excuse imaginable. Nevertheless, here it is.

For those who’ve never heard of them (and that’s plenty of people) the Do Lectures take place every year in September on a campsite just outside Cardigan in West Wales called Fforest. They were set up by David Hieatt, co founder of mail order clothing brand Howies and they are now in their third year. The lectures are all about ideas for change, sometimes on a small scale and sometimes on a huge scale. The truth is, it’s really a collection of very interesting people who split into two categories; those who have big ideas for change and those who are simply leading very interesting and inspirational lives.

Attendance numbers are capped at 80, which is partly based around the capacity of the site itself (with all the lecturers, family members etc. there are probably about 120 onsite) and partly to maintain an intimate focus for the event. 24 lectures take place over 4 days and the majority of lecturers stay on site for the duration - living, eating, cooking and very often boozing with the attendees.

I decided to go with my book club friend Ian Street who works for the Local Authority and we were both lucky enough to be accepted after answering the 10 (really good) questions that constitute the entry criteria. 20 tickets are released every 2 months in the lead up to the event so it was by no means a done deal that we would both get in.

We’ve known about the lectures since they started, so we knew they would be good, but it’s quite possible that they could be one of those rarest of things - a genuinely life-changing event. I’m very wary of false epiphanies and those who know me will vouch for my natural cynicism (which I’m trying to diminish). However, a good few shifts in thinking happened to both Ian and I over the 4 days which, given the time lapse between the event and this blog post, appear to have taken root permanently. I won’t witter on about this now because it will doubtless become evident in posts later on.

Speakers ranged from lecture-circuit giants like Tim Berners-Lee (fantastically geeky and refreshingly humble inventor of the Web) and Steve Allen (flavour-of-the-epoque author of ‘Getting things Done’) to personal achievers like Ed Stafford (the only guy to survive walking the entire length of the Amazon) and Daniel Seddiqui (who had 50 jobs in 50 American States in as many months). There were also a smattering of fantastic nutcases who brought a rich dose of levity to an otherwise potentially intimidating array of brainboxes and high achievers.

However, for me the stories of individuals who were simply compelled to get on and do something about a problem they just couldn’t live with were the most affecting. It was difficult to choose my top 3, but the time lapse has helped with the emergence of the ones who I simply can’t get out of my head. Here they are:

Maggie Doyne

Moments into Maggie’s lecture, you could hear a pin drop. At the ripe age of 23, Maggie told a story of how at 18 her life lacked real meaning (who worries about that at 18?!) and she decided, to go backpacking around the world. She finished up in Nepal where she witnessed the horrendous plight of refugee children who were living rough on the streets. Maggie could barely contain her emotions whilst she spoke about one particular 6 year-old who made it impossible for her to walk away without doing something. Maggie stood on stage, the same innocence in her face as we saw in the pictures of the children, and the audience were totally spellbound by every word, every gesture. Her implied message was as powerful as any we heard over the whole 4 days - sometimes, you’ve just got to do something. Maggie built a home for as many children as she could and now has the Kopila Valley Children’s Home and School which houses and teaches 230 children. I have never felt more privileged to be in the immediate orbit of another human being. Have a look:

I’ve been waiting for someone to help me get to the real meaning of social networking and this guy finally did it for me. Some intellectuals generously help us make sense of the world and enjoy our lives and Euan is definitely one of those. He was funny, fascinating, humble and above all, human. I think it would be a waste of time trying to explain the themes that the former Head of Communication at the BBC explored, but I recommend you have a look at his lecture.

My top 3 wouldn’t be complete without one of the nutcases and it was a toss-up between Steve and another guy who I give special mention to at the end. Steve arrived onsite at the end of the first day and drew glances of bemused interest from the off. Picture the scene; everybody wearing variations on the theme of ‘outdoor’, with a predominance of green and the odd Howies-style touch of discreet colour, usually via jazzy outdoorsy shoes or perhaps a woolly jumper. All of us looking worthy and wholly appropriate for the light layer of early Autumn mud beneath our feet.

Up pops Steve in gold shoes, deep pink velvet trousers, open double cuffs and a sumptuously upholstered three-quarter length coat. There he stands, in the mud, chatting away with a pint of Scruttock’s Old Dirigible or whatever brain-trammelling ale it was, in his artistic-looking, piano player’s hand. Looking at him, I felt the lecture could go either way. In the end, it went exactly the right way - the life story of a dyslexic boy who lived with a chimpanzee, went to work on a horse, stood in for the actress’s legs in the snake scene in ‘Temple of Doom’ and was inspired by the death of his beloved auntie to wear his Sunday Best every day.

Finally, special mention goes to Alex Haw: Artist, Architect and Director of Atmos. He confessed to thinking that his slot was going to be considerably longer than his 25 minute allotted time. Instead of shortening his presentation, he chose to rattle through his slides (clearly designed for little short of a half-day seminar) at such a speed that the sheer ridiculousness of it raised howls of laughter, not least from the host David Hieatt who kept looking around tittering like a naughty schoolboy. However, unlike Vivienne Westwood on Wogan, Alex took the whole thing in good spirit and relished the entertainment he was providing. Any doubts I might have had about his being offended by the laughs were completely dispelled by a story he told my mate Ian while we were having dinner. He said he’d been invited to speak at a super-credible event in Sydney. Immediately after his speech he asked the host what they thought. They said that it was the worst speech they’d ever heard and futhermore, they were having a barbecue later on and he wasn’t invited. He was laughing his head off as he told the story.

His work is great though, so I’d look at the work and take my word for it on the lecture.

I can’t recommend this lecture series/experience highly enough. There were a few things that didn’t sit quite right for me - the fairly conventional auction on Sunday and Andy Middleton’s slightly awkward segues from funny guy to Mr. Earnest. But it’s a genuinely important thing and still in its infancy. I promise to keep this blog up to date with some of the things it has inspired me to do.

The alternative food wizards are at Whiteleys shopping centre, in London this half-term to allow visitors to make their secret-recipe chewing gum in a vast array of flavours and colours. This sensory journey will encourage the child inside everyone. A brand experience that challenges all the senses and is fun. They design spectacular food experiences often working on an architectural scale with cutting edge technology.

The mad scientists of the culinary world relaunched jelly in a new way, creating glowing, jelly structures of famous landmarks, before breathable cocktails, a banquet of all black food and a huge architectural punch bowl where a Robert Adam building was flooded with four tonnes of Courvoisier punch and drinkers first floated across it on a giant orange segment raft. They provided expertise for Heston Blumenthal’s series Feast and worked with the ICA to transform Peter Greenaway’s The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover for a scratch ‘n’ sniff event introduced by the director. www.jellymongers.com

When I was a kid this time of year was all about Mischievous Night followed by Bonfire night. I’m told that Mischievous Night is a Northern thing and not celebrated down South but it definitely used to be a key date in my diary. A group of us used to get together and create havoc doing small pranks and generally being naughty – it was highly enjoyable.

Halloween wasn’t really on the agenda but oh how things have changed.

The 31st October is a firm favourite with my children. They spend weeks thinking about their outfits, planning their make-up and working on new tricks that they can play on the neighbours. The supermarkets are jam packed with scary costumes, pumpkins and lots of other spooky goodies – which is a nightmare if you’re in a rush to get something and the kids want to look at it all!

The reason I’m thinking about this is that I’ve come into to work today and the office is being turned into a Halloween palace. There are skeletons hung from doorways, cobwebs around entrances, skull bunting covering reception and a mass of pumpkins scattered everywhere. I can’t complain though, with the theme comes lots of edible goodies including buns and sweets. Oh how my kids would enjoy it!

October 22, 2010

Had a quick scan over the nominees for The Marketing Society's Brand of the Year Award 2010 (thanks Nick) and it made for some interesting reading. Particularly the 'don't believe in capitals' branding of the intriguingly named giffgaff - the only company on the list that I'd not heard of.

Luckily our lovely Coral was here to point me in the direction of some work she'd done with them in the past, more specifically a cuddle monster campaign... So far this sounds amazing yes? Wait...

The campaign featured GIANT cuddly jumpers, fitting in up to four people, being distributed to giffgaffers nationwide who were then instructed to take to the streets and give away free hugs - and my goodness they looked like the most heart-warming of hugs! These missions were then captured on video and naturally spread like a rash all over the internet.
Genius.

So giffgaff you have my vote - the very best of luck to you with taking on the other nominees, including Apple and Facebook... If you don't quite make it, I'm sure there'll be plenty of people happy to hug you better.

October 20, 2010

I'm not sure why, but I'm always surprised when articles on typography hit the mainstream press. Maybe its because my working life is so heavily involved with the great artform that I presume 'normal' folk will not be as interested. Or maybe its because I've seen so many clients who don't give a jot. But this week alone there was an excellent piece in The Observer and bbc.co.uk is getting in on the act today, with a debate on the merits (or lack of) of Comic Sans. In our new world, technology and communication channels evolve every day, but the very basis of that communication remains very much the same. The typefaces that work best on screen, as well as in print, are usually the very same typefaces developed over the last 100 years or so, by skilled type designers who understand what it takes to communicate. Hopefully, those that are interested, will learn to also love the art of the typesetter. How type is used, spaced, weighted and crafted are just as important skills as the type itself, and will hopefully long be recognised and cherished. And we can talk for days on the subject if you want to know more.....